Leader: Ruella Frank, Ph.D.

Location: Bromma, Stockholm

Dates: 28.-29.4.2018

In this 2-day workshop, Dr Ruella Frank will explore the intricate relational moves of embodied intersubjectivity that form a basis of communication, initially between parent and baby but then throughout life.

The movement repertoire that develops in the first year of life is a language that conveys our most pressing desires, intentions and emotions. These expressive movements, acquired in the company of significant others, go on to become the tacit core of adult behaviour in everyday experience and, of course, in the psychotherapy relationship too.

It is on the details of this somatic expression of affect and relational intent that we will focus during the workshop, developing our understanding of the meaning and emotional significance of these somatic communications and skills in applying those insights to the therapy work.

Ruella Frank, Ph.D., is founder and director of the Center for Somatic Studies, and faculty at Gestalt Associates for Psychotherapy and the New York Institute for Gestalt Therapy. Ruella was a student of Laura Perls, one of the founders of Gestalt Therapy. She teaches workshops throughout the United States, Canada, Mexico and various European countries.

Ruella is the author of several chapters in various publications, as well as the book Body of Awareness: A Somatic and Developmental Approach to Psychotherapy, (2001, GestaltPress, available in 4 languages) and co-authored The First Year and The Rest of Your Life: Movement, Development and Psychotherapeutic Change (2010, Routledge Press, available in 3 languages). Her training video Introduction to Developmental Somatic Psychotherapy, now subtitled in French and Russian, is available at www.somaticstudies.com.